Researchers Revamp the Incandescent Light Bulb

Researchers at MIT may have improved on Edison’s creation in just the right way.

Incandescent light bulbs, considered wasteful of heat, could potentially be improved in efficiency, according to researchers working at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Using tech not radically different from what Thomas Edison conceived in the 1880s, incandescent bulbs use electricity to create light by heating a wire filament to temperatures of around 4900 degrees Fahrenheit—causing the filament to glow and produce light. However, these bulbs only convert about three percent of the energy required into light—putting the rest out as unnecessary heat—making such classic bulbs largely inefficient and potentially damaging to the climate.

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The authors of the paper state that such an innovation could “become a light source that reaches luminous efficiencies surpassing existing lighting technologies, and nearing a limit for lighting applications…approaching that of commercial fluorescent or light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, but with exceptional reproduction of colors and scalable power.”